Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Tuesday, 29 November 2022
Athonite Fathers Of The 20th Century Volume 1 by Cell of the Resurrection, Mount Athos
Paperback: In the lives of twenty-four Athonite Fathers of the twentieth century the reader encounters heaven on earth, the Gospel in action and the continuation of the Incarnation.
Following the Holy Fathers, these holy ascetics lead us on the Way and connect us to the clouds of witnesses gone before us. Their lives guide us on the path of repentance and their examples inspire us to divine ascent.
As so many flowers beautifying the Garden of the Theotokos, the lives of these Hagiorite ascetics adorn the Church with their hesychastic way of life, ascetic struggles, patristic confession of faith, and heavenly visitations.
Advanced and beginners, faithful and seekers, all alike will cling to these eyewitness accounts of contemporary angels in the flesh and men of heaven.
This treasury of spiritual gems has been carefully gathered and guarded by Hagiorite desert fathers and now it is made available to you, the pious pilgrim on the path to paradise.
Athonite Fathers of the 20th Century (2022) is translated from the Greek text, From the Ascetic and Hesychastic Athonite Tradition.
Additional volumes will be released soon.
Mount Athos is the site of an important centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism in northeastern Greece.
Monday, 28 November 2022
Beasts Of A Little Land by Juhea Kim
Paperback: Beasts of a Little Land (2021) is longlisted for the 2022 HWA Debut Crown Award; finalist for the 2022 Balcones Fiction Prize; a Recommended Read by: The Today Show, The Washington Post, USA Today, GoodReads, BuzzFeed, LitHub, Fortune, The Chicago Review of Books, Entertainment Weekly, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, BookRiot, Buzz Books, Vulture, Bustle, Good Morning America, Christian Science Monitor, PopSugar, The Oregonian, Globe & Mail, Seattle Public Library; a Best Book of 2021: Harper's Bazaar, Real Simple, Ms. Magazine, Portland Monthly; Amazon's Best Books of December 2021; December 2021 Indie Next List Pick; and December 2021 Library Reads Pick.
As the Korean independence movement gathers pace, two children meet on the streets of Seoul. Fate will bind them through decades of love and war. They just don't know it yet.
It is 1917, and Korea is under Japanese occupation. With the threat of famine looming, ten-year-old Jade is sold by her desperate family to Miss Silver's courtesan school in the bustling city of Pyongyang.
As the Japanese army tears through the country, she is forced to flee to the southern city of Seoul. Soon, her path crosses with that of an orphan named JungHo, a chance encounter that will lead to a life-changing friendship.
But when JungHo is pulled into the revolutionary fight for independence, Jade must decide between following her own ambitions and risking everything for the one she loves.
Sweeping through five decades of Korean history, Juhea Kim's sparkling debut is an intricately woven tale of love stretched to breaking point, and two people who refuse to let go.
About the author: Juhea Kim was born in Incheon, Korea, and moved to Portland, Oregon, at the age of nine. She is the founder and editor of Peaceful Dumpling, an online magazine covering sustainable lifestyle and ecological literature. She earned her BA in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. Her writing has been published in Granta, Catapult, Joyland, Times Literary Supplement, Independent, Zyzzyva and elsewhere, and Beasts of a Little Life is her debut novel. After a decade in New York City, Kim now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Rating: 5/5
Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Personal Notes by Bernadette SOUBIROUS
Booklet: With the exception of the autobiographic narratives of the Apparitions, the small note book containing Bernadette's Personal Notes, is certainly the most precious treasure of Saint Bernadette kept in the archives of Saint Gildard's Convent in Nevers, France.
In this very modest note book, Saint Bernadette has written down:
1) Extracts from books that she had read, pious thoughts or prayers copied from holy pictures, snatches of hymns, etc; among which, sometimes, short, simple prayers to God, to Our Lady and to the Saints escaped from Bernadette's heart;
2) Notes taken down during a retreat given by a Jesuit, Father Secail, from 21 October to 30 October 1873. During that retreat, Bernadette made her confession to the chaplain of St Gildard's Convent, Father Douce, a Marist Priest, whose advice and lines of direction she asked for. She also jotted down her own answers to which she added her resolutions and personal prayers. All these form real confidences, revealing the secrets of her interior life;
3) A few outlines of meditations;
4) A very beautiful prayer to the Virgin Mary, in the form of a dialogue between the soul and Mary, which she copied from a picture;
5) Then follow notes taken down during the retreat given by a Jesuit, Father Candeloup, from 5 September to 14 September 1874, with the advice received from Father Douce, together with her own resolutions. These pages are especially enlightening;
6) Again, a selection of thoughts, some of which were copied from holy pictures;
7) Finally, on the last page, scribbled in pencil in a shaky handwriting, probably written on her sick bed, we read a very moving sentence on holiness and the Rule. To the note book dated 1873 and 1874 we add some notes written on note books or loose-leaf pages of the same size as Personal Notes. They will enable the reader to follow Bernadette further in the admirable progress of her soul, constantly moved during these years, to a purer love of Jesus Christ.
We have found the source of most of the copied notes. However, this takes nothing away from the originality and intimacy of these pages. Saint Bernadette chose these texts because they were what she preferred and she preferred them because, in fact, they corresponded to the depths of her own interior life.
To copy, for Bernadette, was to express her feelings and to bring to light her deepest and sometimes her most hidden desire. It was also a means of expressing beneath a borrowed veil, what she was too timid to write in her own simple words.
- André RAVIER, S J
Personal Notes (1873-75) was purchased at the Librairie Catholique Internationale in Lourdes, France, for a sum of €4.50.
Monday, 21 November 2022
Beneath The Mountain by Luca d'Andrea
Paperback: In Luca D’Andrea’s atmospheric and brilliant thriller, set in a small mountain community in the majestic Italian Dolomites, an outsider must uncover the truth about a triple murder that has gone unsolved for thirty years.
New York City native Jeremiah Salinger is one half of a hot-shot documentary-making team. He and his partner, Mike, made a reality show about roadies that skyrocketed them to fame. But now Salinger’s left that all behind, to move with his wife, Annelise, and young daughter, Clara, to the remote part of Italy where Annelise grew up - the Alto Adige.
Nestled in the Dolomites, this breathtaking, rural region that was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire remains more Austro than Italian. Locals speak a strange, ancient dialect - Ladino - and root for Germany (against Italy) in the world cup.
Annelise’s small town - Siebenhoch - is close-knit to say the least and does not take kindly to out-of-towners. When Salinger decides to make a documentary about the mountain rescue group, the mission goes horribly awry, leaving him the only survivor. He blames himself, and so - it seems - does everyone else in Siebenhoch. Spiraling into a deep depression, he begins having terrible, recurrent nightmares. Only his little girl Clara can put a smile on his face.
But when he takes Clara to the Bletterbach Gorge - a canyon rich in fossil remains - he accidentally overhears a conversation that gives his life renewed focus. In 1985, three students were murdered there, their bodies savaged, limbs severed and strewn by a killer who was never found. Although Salinger knows this is a tightlipped community, one where he is definitely persona non grata, he becomes obsessed with solving this mystery and is convinced it is all that can keep him sane. And as Salinger unearths the long kept secrets of this small town, one by one, the terrifying truth is eventually revealed about the horrifying crime that marked an entire village.
Completely engrossing and deeply atmospheric, Beneath The Mountain (2017) is a thriller par excellence. It is translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis.
About the author: Luca D’Andrea lives with his family in Bolzano, Italy, where he was born in 1979 and where he worked as a teacher for ten years. Beneath the Mountain (2017) is his first thriller and was the most talked-about and fastest-selling book at the London Book Fair in 2016. It sold in thirty countries before it was first published in Italy.
Rating: 5/5
The Beast Of Bethulia Park by S P Caldwell
Paperback: When Ray Parker dies unexpectedly in Bethulia Park Hospital, his suspicious family launch a campaign for justice. They recruit the young and idealistic hospital chaplain Father Calvin Baines to find a beautiful nurse who might unmask the doctor they believe is guilty of murder.
When Emerald Essien enters his life, the priest finds his high principles are put to the test in a way that drives him to the edge of despair as he is propelled into a dark world of sexual obsession, danger and death.
"The Beast of Bethulia Park is a gripping psychological novel with Catholic themes but is also a wonderful thriller in its own right. Caldwell is an exciting new voice with a journalist's eye for crime detail and medical research. The priest belongs in the top literary gallery of priest protagonists who are all too human and find themselves up against clerical authority. A major new talent has arrived." - William Cash, award-winning author; founder of The Mace, Spear's magazine and The Westminster Index; writer at The Times and the New Statesman; and Chairman at the Catholic Herald
About the author: Simon Paul Caldwell was born in Liverpool in 1968 and trained as a journalist on local newspapers in Lancashire in the early 1990s. He joined the Catholic Herald as associate editor in 1999 and the Daily Mail in 2001, spending more than a decade on the foreign desk. He lives in Lancashire and continues to work as a freelance journalist and media consultant.
Rating: 3/5
Saturday, 19 November 2022
The Life And Prayers Of Saint Lucy of Syracuse by Wyatt North Publishing
Paperback: One part biography, one part prayer book, The Life and Prayers of Saint Lucy of Syracuse (2013) is an essential book for any Christian.
For a saint about whom so very little is really known, Saint Lucy (283 AD to 304 AD) has a surprisingly impressive religious pedigree. Her relics have traveled the world. Her cult extends across oceans, and every year, large numbers of Italian-Americans travel "back home" to Sicily, a land they have primarily known through an increasingly distant heritage, to participate in the great festival there in her honor.
She is the bringer of light and lucidity, things which are in fact her namesakes as Lucy, or Lucia as she was known in Latin, itself means 'light.' She is also the patron of the blind, and those suffering from ailments of the eye. Ailments of the throat are also one of her specialties. It would seem like Saint Lucy governs over seemingly small and unimportant aspects of life. Those who had not previously heard of her might expect her to be a small niche-saint.
Yet, there she is, the light that once spread across all of Europe, from Spain in the west to Turkey in the east, and from Sicily in the south to Sweden in the north. She was one of eleven female saints officially recognized in the Roman Catholic Mass as early as the year 600.
She makes an appearance in some of the most famous written works of western civilization. She is honoured not only in the Catholic Church, but in the Orthodox Church, the Anglican Church, and even the Lutheran Church, which is noteworthy on its own on account of the Lutheran denial of saints.
About the author: Starting with just one writer, Wyatt North Publishing, a boutique publishing company, has expanded to include writers from across the USA. Their writers include college professors, religious theologians and historians. Visit them at www.WyattNorth.com
Thursday, 17 November 2022
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